


The Wound is the Place Where the Light Enters You

by ButNotTheHippopotamus



Category: Mystic Messenger (Video Game)
Genre: (in the backstory), Character Study, Depression, F/M, Implied/Referenced Suicide, MC is an OC, Mostly canon Complaint, Relationship Study, a backstory, because those are the things that define how and why we fit with people, but just in case i'll throw that out there too, give that poor girl a personality, i doubt anyone who cares enough to read fic about it doesn't know at this point, please, something, this was inspired largely by how bland all the dialogue options leave MC seeming, we still tagging spoilers for 707's real name here?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-12
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2020-03-02 08:32:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18807517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ButNotTheHippopotamus/pseuds/ButNotTheHippopotamus
Summary: Lola has always understood that sometimes it's the ones who laugh the loudest who hurt the most.A study of how two damaged, broken people come together to help each other find the brightness they've only been pretending at.





	The Wound is the Place Where the Light Enters You

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like I'm a few years late to this fandom, but these two took up residence in my brain recently and refused to go until I'd written it out a bit. I may end up adding to/continuing this a bit further, and I may or may not bump the rating up to E if I do. (I generally only write when and if I'm in the mood to, and my moods are a little inconsistent lately, but on the off chance that anyone is particularly into this, I will say that kudos and comments invoke my inspiration like nothing else, so let me know if there's anyone who might like to see more of these two!)
> 
> The only real adjustments to canon I've made are to extend days 1-7 to take place over the course of a month, because while they make sense for game play, I feel like it impedes story and relationship development to not allow a bit more time for getting to know each other and forming initial connections. (...I may have also borrowed bits from other routes and dropped them into 707's? I know I referenced a chat from Another Story for sure at least.)
> 
> Also, to indicate when dialogue is intended to be a translation of something spoken in Korean, I've used **bold**. (I forgot to mention this and just realized that it surely makes no sense whatsoever without explanation, whoops.)

She laughs. Long and loud, sometimes sweet, sometimes sharp, but she always laughs. She capitalizes the second and third letters in her name so that it reads LOLa when she fills it in on the app she doesn’t even remember downloading. That day, _that day_ , somewhere in the back of her mind, she thinks it’s like a badly woven grass matt, her laughter, that anyone ought to be able to see the tiger trap beneath it. She thinks it’s probably the same on this day every year, that this wouldn’t be the first time she’s failed to cover for herself. But there’s no one in the apartment that she has no business being in to see through her, and, well, apparently chat covers a multitude of sins in ways that real conversations never can, because for all their suspicion, all the these strangers say when she tells them she followed anonymous directions to a strange apartment for absolutely no reason comprehensible even to herself is, “ **How naive** ,” and, “ **So cute lol** ,” and “ **Don’t listen to strangers; the world is dangerous** ,” before they go back to bickering amongst themselves. (She _tells_ herself she can’t comprehend why she would do something so stupid, anyway, tells herself while laughing at herself that this is crazy.)

(There are a lot of things Lola tells herself. There are a lot of things Lola doesn’t tell anyone.)

Even when she reads back over the chat log just after, she still isn’t quite sure _how_ exactly she got roped into being a ... what even is she now, a party coordinator? She’d tried to say that it wasn’t just that she was using shitty grammar because that’s how people talk in chat, that her Korean was conversationally _passable_ , but it really wasn’t good enough to do this, even if she were in any other way actually qualified for whatever it is they seem to want her to do. But at the end of the log, there it is, her promise that she’ll try her best, and she doesn’t know why that feels binding as a contract. She could, after all, just delete this stupid app, forget this address, and go back to her quiet life teaching English uninterrupted...

For a moment, for just a moment, she can’t laugh, can’t even breathe. For just a moment, the thought of her quiet life brings her right to the edge, staring down into that suddenly exposed tiger trap, bottomless, an endless expanse of days all just like the one before, _quiet_ and empty and about as meaningful as soap suds rinsing down the drain, and she knows then exactly where it was they caught her after all. It’s charity work, they said. Making a difference. Helping people. Making things better for those in bad situations, they said. She can’t remember the last time she wanted something, not something _important_ anyway, not anything other than a hot bubble bath or a kimchi pancake, but suddenly she does, more than she has words for, in either Korean or English. She wants to be a part of something good, something that helps, something that means something so badly that it _aches_. The idea that she could be not just a part of this but a necessary part, a piece needed to make the whole thing function is almost enough to make her cry. Instead, she laughs.

 

 

Lola laughs too many times to count over the next weeks. She laughs at Yoosung’s sweetly clueless innocence, at Zen’s out-of-control vanity. She chuckles in soft sympathy for Jaehee, cackles at Jumin’s strange, dry, acerbic humor that the rest only seem to even realize is meant to be humor about a quarter of the time. But most of all she laughs because of Seven.

He terrifies her at first, that very first day, because within hours he _knows everything about her_. He knows her secrets, or at least all of them that can be traced through government documents and medical records and internet transactions and whatever else his apparently unequaled hacking skill has access to.

But then he makes her laugh.

Again, and again, and again, Seven makes her laugh. His absurdity, his outrageousness, his teasing. She realizes at some point that it’s a _competition_ between them, but the best kind, the kind you win even when you lose. She realizes that even though he terrified in those first days, it’s delight that she associates him with soon after. As weeks pass, as she grows more and more comfortable with them all, when that quiet ache inside of her hits (the one she always identifies as boredom with a stubborn, insistent vehemence, because girls who go out of their way to make sure no one gets too close aren’t allowed to be _lonely_ ) it’s him that she calls most often.

Summer vacation begins, and she’s able to dedicate more time to the RFA. Before, she had been dropping by once a day to sync the app’s extra features with the data in the apartment, but she decides now to spend a few nights to focus on getting all the emails just right and sent out as soon as possible. It’s feels strange. All the locked filing cabinets are reminders that this is Rika’s job, not hers, not really, not even if Rika is dead. It feels like sharing space with Rika’s ghost. Even though the sheets are clean, she can’t help thinking that she’s sleeping in a dead woman’s bed.

She rolls over and gropes for her phone in the dark. As her hand makes contact, it _moves_ , and she jerks away reflexively, shrieking, before she realizes it’s only vibrating because someone is calling. She leans over the edge of the bed to retrieve it from where it landed on the floor.

She’s smiling as soon as her eyes land on the image of Seven dressed up as his maid that she set as his image in her contacts.

“Meow?” she asks, cradling the phone against her ear.

“Lola?!”

She loves the way he says her name. Yoosung pronounces it like Rora, and it makes her laugh, makes her think of a puppy trying to speak, but honestly it sounds a little ridiculous--not that she’s judging, because ㄷ and ㅌ still sound exactly the same to her, and who knows what they sound like to Koreans when she tries to pronounce them, so it isn’t as though she’s got any room _to_ judge. When Seven says her name, though, it’s something soft and round and sweet as candy. He had offered to speak English to her when they first started talking, but she’d declined, insisting she needed the practice, though she sometimes slips into English herself, when her vocabulary doesn’t quite extend far enough to express herself or come to her fast enough, or when she’s just simply being lazy.

“ **Why are you still as Rika’s apartment?** ” he demands, snapping her to attention with the worry thick in his voice.

“ **I’m staying here for a few days so I can get more done for the party.** ” It takes her just a moment to process his question enough to have one of her own. “ **How did you know I’m at Rika’s apartment?** ”

He makes a vague mumbling noise, lets out a laugh that’s faintly awkward but makes her smile anyway. “ **The app keeps track of GPS information for all the RFA members.** ” He seems to consider this for a moment before expanding defensively, “ **I wasn’t trying to be invasive. It’s a security feature! I should probably charge you all for including it--you know Jumin pays exorbitant fees for his security personnel--but God Seven is very generous!** ”

She wonders if this ought to bother her more than it does. “Mmhhmm. **Security** , huh? You’re a total creeper.” The accusation is undercut by the amusement in her voice and her barely stifled giggle.

He protests immediately, loud and whiny, and she can’t help thinking that the two syllables of the Korean word for no, _ani_ , are so much better suited to this kind of pouty denial. She’s about to respond in kind when something else occurs to her, and she finds her voice coming out entirely serious. “Hey. Luciel.”

“ **I really wasn’t--** ”

“ **Thank you.** ”

There’s a long pause. “ **Ah--for so kindly providing my extraordinary security services for free? You don’t have to--** ”

“No. Not that. For ...back when you did the background check. For not telling the others about…” Her voice drops even though she’s alone in the apartment, head tilting further toward her shoulder as she cradles the phone tighter. “...about my mom. Thank you. **Thank you.** ”

“ **...Don’t. Don’t thank me for that. It’s shitty. I found out all your secrets, but I still get to keep all of mine. Telling everyone if you don’t want them to know would have been hurtful. I wouldn’t do that. You don’t have to thank me for not doing it.** ”

“ **But I still feel thankful anyway.** ” A mischievous grin steals over her face, and she wonders if he can hear it, the sound of her smiling in her voice. “But if you want to make it fair, you should tell me your real name.”

“ **No**.” It isn’t drawn out or whiny this time. It’s quiet and… infinitely sad, and not what she expects at all.

“Seven?”

“ **Don’t ask me that. It doesn’t matter anyway. Don’t waste your time wondering.** ”

“Luc--”

“ **Instead** ,” his voice is bright again when he cuts her off, full of the eager absurdity she’s so much more used to from him, “ **wonder about what Elizabeth III is doing right now!** **That’s a much better use of your time! Do you think she’s thinking about me? It’s been so long since we got to play together. I bet she misses me.** ”

She laughs. It is, she thinks, the first time she’s laughed on the phone with Seven and it’s been a fake sound meant to cover something else. But he didn’t tell the others, and even if he’s right about that being a cruel thing to do, she’s still grateful. So she doesn’t mind. She’s spent so long covering for herself; she’s gotten good at it. She doesn’t mind covering for him.

“ **I bet she’s eating cat food that costs more than every meal you’ve eaten this week combined.** From a crystal dish.”

“ **Honey Buddha chips are not cheap!** ”

“ **I know, I know. Because they’re so yummy. When I find out where you live, I’m going to come and eat your entire stash.** ”

“ **I’d tell you that’s bad for you and that you should eat food that’s better, but you’ll never get through the security, so I won’t worry.** ” He sounds so smug at this, it’s almost easy to forget how brokenhearted he sounded just a moment ago.

Somehow the fact of that, how easy it is to pretend she didn’t just hear what she did in his voice, makes her wonder for the first time in her life if covering like that is maybe not a kindness at all.

And then she thinks of her own wounds, of the idea that they may never heal covered over as they are. ...Maybe it’s not a kindness. But it isn’t like she’s going to fix anything for him. She can’t even fix herself. So she just laughs. “ **Of course I will. I’ll disguise myself as a cat and stand outside your front door meowing and crying. You’ll definitely let me in.** ”

“ **But you told me your nefarious plan! I’ll have to be on guard! I’ll have to resist any precious kitties at my door!** ” There’s a pause and then a distressed noise. “ **Gah! But you’re going to be so cute! How can I resist that?!** ”

“ **There’s no hope for you, Seven Zero Seven.** ”

He sighs, big and overdramatic, air hissing into the phone, and she thinks she’s meant to believe the utter hopelessness in his voice is playfully exaggerated. “ **...I know.** ”

 

 

It’s different after that, laughing with Seven. Even when she’s covering, it never feels like a patchy grass matt so long as he’s laughing too, on the other side of a computer screen, on the other end of the phone line. Instead, it’s like laying in a field under a starlit sky, and she wants to stay there forever, wants to forget entirely that the tiger trap still exists somewhere else. She creates in her imagination the idea that if she can do this right, that if this party goes well, then the emptiness she’s always trying to cover over really will fade away. It’s a stupid thoughts, and in her more self-aware moments, she knows that. In her most self-aware moments she even understands that what she’s really hoping is that if she does well enough, the RFA will let her stay with them even after they realize that there is a crack inside of her from which things that aren’t meant to leak out and leave her hollow.

The thing is, they keep telling her she’s _doing a good job_ , and every time they do, it’s a little easier to believe the foolish ultimatum she’s set. She’s pretty sure she has thus far managed to keep her cool, to just thank them and say she’s trying hard, but honestly it’s pathetic how she lights up everytime she hears those words. Even though staying in a space she can’t stop thinking of as _Rika’s_ is a little uncomfortable, she does manage to get a lot more done, and that pleases her, because these days she pretty much _lives_ to hear praise for how she’s handling this job that she should never have been offered and should never have accepted. It doesn’t hurt either that it’s nice to be busy doing something that she genuinely believes _matters_.

She’s living for that praise right up until the last night she was planning to spend at Rika’s apartment, when everything starts spinning out of control. It’s only to be expected, she supposes, to find out she actually is in some kind of vague danger. Who just follows some anonymous stranger’s directions to an unoccupied residence, accepts a job from some other random strangers, and thinks shit is all just going to be normal? Of course it isn’t. But Seven’s sudden insistence that she stay at Rika’s place and not go back to her own apartment until he tracks the hacker down and figures things out seems a little extreme. His safety precaution alternative to sending bodyguards to her is even harder to swallow. The second the chatroom begins to empty, she’s calling him, jamming roughly at the screen of her phone as though it’s the one who has offended her.

Before he can even get out a greeting, she’s cutting him off. “Choi Luciel. _What the actual fuck_? There’s a CCTV camera in Rika’s apartment, and you only just now felt that maybe I should at least be _aware_ of this fact?”

When he’d told her he kept track of her phone’s GPS information, it hadn’t bothered her terribly. After all, he said he did it for all the members, and it seemed innocuous enough. It isn’t like she goes anywhere that she doesn’t want him to know about anyway.

But this? That she’s been on video all this time? It feels decidedly less innocuous.

“ **...It’s just in the living room. And the hallway. And the kitchen. There’s not one in the bedroom or the bathroom or anything weird.** ” He’s distracted, only half even paying attention to her. She can hear the clacking of computer keys in the background.

She snorts. “Right. No, okay, yeah. Totally. There are just cameras in _most_ of the rooms in this apartment, **not anything _weird_. **Sure. Because _that’s_ completely fucking _normal_ , Luciel.”

“ **Are you mad?** ” His voice is focused now and genuinely confused, background clacking gone silent.“ **About the CCTV? You aren’t mad that I couldn’t keep the hacker from getting at us again, or that I haven’t figured out where he is yet, or that I have this shitty agency job distracting me when the RFA needs me, but you’re mad about the CCTV?** ” He suddenly laughs, and it gives her a kind of whiplash trying to keep up with his moods, and _why is he laughing like that when she’s trying to be mad?!_ “ **Is that the face you make when you get mad? You shouldn’t. It’s too--** ” His voice drops off suddenly into a beat of silence and then he’s whispering frantically, “ **Oh, shit, Vanderwood is coming; I have to go.** ”

He’s already hung up by the time she finds herself snapping at her phone uselessly as the screen goes dark, “Are you already watching me right now?! And why are you afraid of your _maid_ catching you on the phone, anyway?!”

 

 

For three days, she watches the messenger and listens on the phone as Seven winds up tighter and tighter. She can’t help thinking he’s fraying at the edges. She doesn’t think he’s slept for more than a handful of hours in days, and he never seems to eat anything that actually contains any nutritional value, and she finds herself worried in a way that’s nothing like her usual worry, and it terrifies her. 

Because the thing is, sure, she hides it well enough, and most of the people around her don’t even realize, but she’s so used to being the biggest mess in her own life, she doesn’t know what to do with the idea that someone _else_ is unraveling in front of her. The chord of fear it strikes in her is old, long buried but still familiar, and brutal.

She hates it. In the mornings, his false enthusiasm is beginning to approach actual franticness, but as hard as that is to watch, when the sun goes down and his mood dips with it, it’s worse. She does wish he’d hurry up and finish whatever agency work he has and come over, not because she’s scared that something will happen to her, but because at least then she could make him eat something other than potato chips and fish-shaped bread. She doesn’t think the others have any idea just how worried she is. How could they when all she does is joke about licking the red bean paste from the bungeoppang off of his fingers? (And it is just a joke. Definitely just a joke. Most certainly not a scenario she gave even a single actual thought to, at all. On any level.)

They don’t understand though. He’s spiraling out of control of his own emotions hard enough that even they can’t miss it, even they are worried, but they don’t really understand. They have no idea how deep the darkness that humor covers can run, but _she_ does. So she keeps joking in the messenger, because much as she’s wondering these days if that isn’t the wrong approach, she isn’t just going to reveal him _in front_ of everyone like that. Not when he kept her secret for her.

And then she’s standing in the kitchen with shattered glass all over the floor, _reeling_ , because she hasn’t been living with a _ghost_ , she’s been living with a _bomb_ , and _he told her to stay here with it, knowing it was here_ , he told her not to go back to her own apartment but to _stay with this bomb_ , and the hacker is someone he knows, someone he knows well enough to drain the blood from his face and leave him so stunned he looks like he can hardly breathe, and _for fuck’s sake,_ did that guy seriously say he was going to _play with her_ _to make Luciel suffer_?

It’s too much. It’s too much to think, too much to feel, and in an automatic response, she finds herself shutting her reactions down one by one. She has the fleeting thought that Jumin would find this dismissal of her emotions admirable, but the calculation she weighs each thought in her head against before relinquishing it isn’t _is this productive or useful_ the way he describes it. The thought she weighs every other one against is simply that _this isn’t about her_. Whatever is going on, she might be caught in the middle, but if she’s going to be fair about that, _she allowed herself_ to be put in the middle. She _put herself_ there in the middle the first day she came to this apartment. There’s no point crying about it now. Not when, as shaken as she is, she still understands that _she_ isn’t the one who has taken the blow of everything that’s just happened the hardest.

Whoever this hacker is to Seven, the shock of it has shaken him to his core, shaken straight past all his coping mechanisms and defenses, and she’s never seen anything as vulnerable as the pained look on his face.

“Seven… **are you okay**?”

His attention shifts to her then, for the first time since the hacker ran off, and his expression is uncomprehending, disbelieving, as though she’s just whipped off a mask like a Scooby-Doo villain and revealed that she’s actually an alien.

Finally he shakes his head. “ **I don’t know… I don’t think either of us are okay.** ” One hand drags through his hair, leaving red tufts standing on end, and he lets out a series of expletives, most of them words that she only even knows in Korean because during their first phone conversation she’d told him she didn’t know any obscenities in the language and he’d taken that as an unforgivable oversight in her fluency that he would personally see to rectifying at once.

He runs his hands up his face, under his glasses, the heels of his palms pressing harshly against his eyes, like he’s trying to rub away what he’s seen.

If there weren’t a sea of glass between them, if she weren’t barefoot, having never taken to the custom of always wearing slippers in the house, she’d have stepped forward, reached out for him. Instead, she asks, “ **That man… how do you know him?** ”

“ **That man… is my twin brother.** ” He seems to shake himself after he says that, seems to think twice and regret saying it at all. He tells her he’s sorry, as though it’s his fault, and insists her stand still so she doesn’t hurt her feet while he finds a broom. He tells her that he’ll just stay in the corner out of her way. And even though she can feel his worry for her coming off of him, every word from his mouth feels like some kind of retreat. By the time he’s settled in the corner despite her entreaties that he use the desk or the couch, even though it’s still their first time in the same room, he feels farther away from her than he’s ever been.

 

 

She thinks maybe he just needs some space, which is understandable, and she leaves him to himself for the rest of the night, hoping he’ll be a little less shattered in the morning. But when it comes, she finds that he’s only grown colder. To the point that she wonders if she’s done something that was wrong, if he’s angry with her, and it’s a little harder to tell herself that that’s understandable, that it shouldn’t hurt her, because _he’s_ the one who told her to stay here like this, but she does her best to keep pushing that aside. She keeps repeating silently to herself, “ _This isn’t about me_.” Maybe that’s just a cover, the same way laughing has always been, but it gets her through his coldness and his distance and even the moments when his attempts to push her away border on actual cruelty.

With a bowl full of food in each hand, she approaches him where he’s sitting on the floor in the corner, laptop perched on his raised knees so that he can pointedly ignore her. She expects to have to wave a hand in front of his face to get his attention, considering the volume coming from his headphones, but he looks up before she even gets to him, and that’s when she realizes that the reason she can hear his music so well is because the earpiece isn’t actual covering one of his ears. He’s quick to adjust it, as though he hasn’t already given away the fact that he’s only pretending to ignore her while he keeps an ear out, but she just smiles.

“Seven! **I made Tteokbokki!** ”

“ **I’m not hungry.** ” He doesn’t even look at her.

She weighs her options, considering, before she drops down to her knees, sets both bowls on the floor, and reaches for his computer. “ **Even gods have to eat.** ”

His hand cuts her off, holding the machine in place before she can reach it. “ **I don’t have time for stupid jokes from the chatroom. I’m not a god, and I don’t want anything.** ”

She can’t take the laptop from him while he’s holding on to it, but she can at least push the screen closed, out of the way so she can lean forward to level a glare directly at him, eye to eye. “ **Okay. But even fallen angels have to eat, Luciel.** ”

“ **Seriously, can you just knock it the fuck off? I’m tired. I have shit to do.** ”

“ **I _know_ you’re tired. Because that’s what happens when you don’t eat or sleep. You can’t function properly.**” Despite everything about their situation, the smile the flits across her face then is genuine. “ **Just imagine how crabby and mean to me you’ll have the energy to be after you eat!** Levels you can’t even hope to aspire to in your current state!”

His expression doesn’t change. He just looks away from her, fixing his gaze on the window across the room. He seems to have decided, rather than fighting about it, to attempt to simply wait her out.

She sighs, smile slipping. “ **I’m not going to eat again until you do.** ”

He gives her a long, pained look before suddenly leaning in toward her with no warning, so close she can feel the air move past her cheek when he sucks in a breath. It’s only when he sits back again, bowl in hand and a defeated scowl on his face, that she realizes he was only leaning past her to reach it, but her heart keeps thumping erratically as she settles herself cross legged. “ **Missed opportunity there,** Seven. **You obviously should have said,** ‘Then perrish.’”

He doesn’t acknowledge her.

She sighs, looking down at her plate and then back up at him. “ **I hope they aren’t mushy. I’ve never cooked rice cakes before.** ”

He gives her a strange look. “ **You never cook anything.** ”

Had she mentioned that? Or had he just picked it up from the frequency with which she called him while walking back to her apartment from street food vendors or while microwaving cup noodles? Or was the background check he’d done on her really just _that good_? Is that even a thing it’s _possible_ to reveal through hacking? She shrugs. “ **I never cook _for myself_. I liked to cook for my uncle and my cousin back home. I like cooking if someone else is going to eat it. It’s too much bother for just me. Not worth the effort. Anyway, since I haven’t had much practice with Korean food, I hope it’s not bad?**”

It’s stupid how much she wants him to like it. With that same desperation with which she wants the other members of the RFA to tell her she’s doing a good job. All the silence, all the coldness, all the disinterest, she can take it all, but if he doesn’t like these stupid rice cakes that she spent two hours comparing recipes for before picking one… she doesn’t think she’ll be able to hide how badly that will hurt.

It’s only then that he finally takes the first bite, but she can’t read his expression at all. It’s killing her, but her pride won’t let her ask again, and she’s afraid he isn’t going to say anything at all when he finally does.

“ **It’s good… really good. ...I’ll eat it well.** ”

 

 

It felt like progress. Even if he didn’t say another word to her for the rest of the afternoon. It had still felt like progress, right up until the moment he’d snatched the book she’d picked up from beside him out of her hands and snapped at her, “ **God, I don’t know if you’re lighthearted or just dumb!** ”

Even then, even that hurt she could have shoved down and ignored. It was his response to her saying that she only wanted a chance to get close to him that she couldn’t quite swallow down or set aside: “ **That’s strange. I don’t want to get close to you at all.** ”

His words echo in her head as she rolls over in the bed, curling in on herself. Everything else he’s said since he showed up here, she was sure she understood. He’s angry because he wants to protect her; he’s angry because he’s afraid he can’t protect her.

But it suddenly occurs to her that maybe she’s misunderstood, just slightly, but just enough to change everything. Maybe he just doesn’t want _anyone_ to get hurt because of him. Maybe he’s just afraid of having to live with the guilt of believing _anyone_ got hurt because of him.

Not maybe. She’s sure that’s true. She’d just dumbly thought she was something other than just anyone to him, that him not wanting _anyone_ hurt and him not wanting _her_ hurt were two separate, different things, not one and the same.

...She hates herself a little for how much the idea that she was more right than she realized about the fact that none of this is _about her_ hurts. She repeats it yet again, a thousand times more fiercely this time. It’s okay if he doesn’t like her. He doesn’t have to like her. He doesn’t owe it to her to like her. She really does just want to help him, even if he doesn’t like her the way she wants him to so badly. She tells herself it doesn’t change anything at all.

Lola has always told herself a lot of things.

When she finally drifts to sleep, it’s with her arms wrapped around her own chest, as though the gesture will protect her.

She’s always been a light sleeper but a slow waker. She isn’t sure what it is that draws her from sleep now. The door opening, the triangle of light spilling into the room, the slight weight at the edge of the bed. It isn’t that she’s intentionally pretending to be asleep when she’s not, at least not at first. Not until she hears Seven’s voice, so much gentler than anything she’s ever heard from him in person. Than anything she’s heard from him at all, ever, she thinks.

“ **You’re so weird, you know that?** ”

If she were any more awake, she’d have murmured an, “Mmhmm,” and laughed. Lola always laughs.

He speaks to her so softly that even with her head clearing slowly, she can barely catch what he’s saying. When he mentions a name she’s never heard before, her groggy mind struggles to understand who he’s talking about for a moment.

Oh.

Himself.

Saeyoung.

He’s talking about himself.

“ **Letting me protect you… is much more than I deserve. That is enough for Saeyoung.** ”

It’s the word “deserve” that catches her. It isn’t quite the same. His words aren’t _exactly_ the ones that heralded the worst moment of her life, the moment that’s followed her through every moment after, the moment that opened up the pit she’s been trying to cover ever since. It’s not an exact quote. But it’s close enough that for an instant she isn’t a twenty-one-year-old woman, she’s a seven-year-old child looking up at the single tear rolling down her mother’s cheek while the woman tells her, “You deserve so much better, my baby.”

He’s already shut the door behind him when she crashes back into herself, into the present, fully, terribly awake, gasping for breath, sliding out of the bed and onto the floor, pressing her head between her knees as the panic and tears rise. Some part of her thinks desperately, _laugh, just laugh and it’ll be okay_ , but she can’t. Lola who always laughs cannot make herself laugh. Instead, she lets out a broken whimper.

 _Away_. She has to get away. She’s choking. She’s choking on the air in this apartment, and she has to get out.

She stumbles out of the bedroom, bounces off the wall, stubs her toe on a filing cabinet, and limps onward toward the front door.

“Lola?!”

She only registers Seven’s startled, worried voice as something else she must get away from. She gropes at the door’s handle, lets out a groan of frustration between the ragged breaths that are half gasps, half sobs, and fumbles for the locks.

He calls her name again, then once more, closer, and finally reaches out to put a hand over hers where it’s still fumbling to undo the last lock when she continues to ignore him. “Lola, what’s wrong?! What’s going on?! Where exactly are you trying to go at _three o’clock in the morning_?”

She yanks her hand out from under his and beats the door with her fists as though she might break her way through. _Away, away, she has to get away, just run_.

“Lola, you have to talk to me! What’s _wrong_?!”

“I have to go, I have to go, don’t touch me, I have to get away, I can’t, please, I have to…” Once she starts speaking, the words won’t stop, a stream that seems perfectly clear to her but does nothing to diminish his confusion or concern.

He grips her shoulders, makes her turn toward him, and then takes hold of her chin. “Look at me. Lola, look at me. Breathe. Just breathe, okay? With me.” He draws in a long, slow breath, releases it just as slowly, and repeats. “Just breathe now.”

“I can’t…” She struggles to turn back to the door, and when she can’t break his grip, she tries to sink down out of it, without any better luck.

“You can. Just breathe.” Still holding her chin in his fingers, holding her eyes with his, so close, he keeps drawing slow, even breaths.

Eventually her breathing becomes less erratic, and finally her body goes limp. He loosens his grip then, lets her slide down the door until she’s sitting, and squats in front of her. He gently wipes at the tears and snot on her face with the sleeve of his hoodie, and she tries to pull away because, well, that’s kind of _gross_ , but he doesn’t let her.

“What happened? Talk to me, Lola.”

Her eyes are closed when he asks the question, and it’s a long moment before she opens them on his agonized, searching face. “The reason you’ve been so cold. It’s because you think you’re not good enough, right? Not good enough for me.” Her voice is flat.

He looks suddenly incredibly _wary_. “...What does that have to do with anything?”

“You think you’re not good enough. That you don’t deserve me. That I’m too good for you. That I--” Her voice breaks, and she tries again. “That I de--” She cannot say it. She cannot make herself, cannot get through the word. “Do you know what the last thing that my mother said to me before she sent me off with my uncle, shut herself in the bathroom, and slit her wrists was? That I _deserved better_.” It hurts to say, feels like the words are tearing her throat when they come out. She looks away, unable to watch his face while she speaks. “That was the last thing she said, and the next time I saw her, she was white as paper in a bathtub full of red water. I mean, I guess that was in the police report, that I was the one who found her? I don’t know; I’ve never read it.” She nods, almost absently, only half in the present. “I forgot my toothbrush. My uncle told me to just use toothpaste on my finger, but I had such a fit about it. I had to have that damn toothbrush. The handle was shaped like Hello Kitty.”

When her eyes move back to his, they lock on with a burning intensity. “Look, you don’t _have_ to like me. I mean, it kind of sucks if you don’t, because I _really, really_ like you, but I’ll get over it. It’s fine if you don’t like me. But if you like me and you’re doing this because you think… because you think _that_ … I can’t fucking handle that, Luciel. I _really, really cannot handle that_.”

He swallows hard, looking so pained it hurts her to see it. “Lola..” His voice is rough, brittle.

She waits to see if he’s going to actually say anything, and when he doesn't she continues. “You think I don’t have any idea who you are, but I’ve known for a while now. I don’t know _what’s happened to you_ , I don’t know everything, but _I know you_. And I _thought_ that _you_ saw everything. I thought you knew everything. But if you really think that I’m so fucking perfect, then _you’re_ the one who doesn’t know _me_ at all. I’m a dozen kinds of fucked up. If you were only _half_ as decent as you are, I still wouldn’t be _too good_ for you. I’m a fucking _mess_. I’m like an actual banshee, just laughing instead of screaming, laughing so loud and so shrill that no one can get close enough to see that I am not fucking okay at all. But the thing is? Like, even if I were so goddamned perfect, so good, and so _deserving_ _of good things_? What the fuck would that get me? Because my mom was sad and weird and I was just too good for her, I grew up with no mother at all. Because I deserve so fucking much better than you, I get pushed away and hurt and _left,_ again, _left all by myself_. If I’m really too fucking good for _everything_ , what exactly is it that you think I should do? Just _die_ already because nothing will ever be _good enough_?”

He makes an incoherent noise, like hearing those words spoken even hypothetically is unbearable to him. It takes him a moment to gather his words, and she can see how hard he’s struggling to find the right ones. “Lola, that’s… none of that’s the problem between us. You don’t understand. I’m not afraid that I’ll hurt _your feelings_. I mean, I am, but that’s not… I’m afraid that you will literally be tortured, raped, and murdered because I care about you. _That’s_ my level of fucked up. ‘I’m a shitty person and you are the best person I’ve ever known,’ is there, but it’s like… fifty floors below my level. My level is ‘because of the job I do, there have been, are, and will be people who would do such terrible things to you if they figured out it would hurt me.’ And it would. It would _more than_ hurt me. It would _kill me_ if something happened to you because of me. **Shit** , Lola, _look at me_. I can’t work when you’re not in the same room because I’m so scared something will happen to you. When you _go to the bathroom_ I freeze up and the code I’m working on makes about as much sense to me as it would to _Zen_ until you come back.” He puts his elbows on his knees and buries his head in his hands, glasses smooshing awkwardly into his face. “...I am so completely fucked, Lola.”

He just sits there, head in his hands, when he’s done, and the silence stretches on until she reaches out a hand slowly, fingers carding through his wavy hair.

“Lola…” His voice sounds desperate, broken, as he reaches out and catches her wrist without raising his head. She expects him to push her away, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t move at all after that, just holds her hand there against his hair for a long time.

Finally, he raises his head and gives her a hollow look as he pushes his glasses into place, revealing red marks where the frames dug into his skin. “It’s late. You should get some more sleep.”

She doesn’t respond, but when he rises, she lets him pull her to her feet.

“And..” He hesitates, only continues when a look of genuine irritation steals over his face like he can’t stop it. “ ...seriously, don’t ever go running out of your house in the middle of the night in your pajamas and barefoot. Ever. Whether I’m around or not. That’s stupid and dangerous.”

She nods, once again saying nothing, before padding quietly down the hall. When she closes the bedroom door, he’s still standing there staring after her.

She tosses and turns until the sun rises. No matter how many times she tries to tell herself _it isn’t about her_ , no matter how many times she tries to put herself and her aching heart aside and figure out what she can possibly do to help the boy who has come to mean so much to her, there is a dark reply to every insistence. “ _It_ is _about you. You, who deserves so much better_ ,” it says with cruel, dripping sarcasm.“ _Better than being cared about. Better than being loved. Better than being fought for or held onto. There’s obviously only one thing better than that, and that’s it._ That’s _exactly what you’ve always deserved._ ”

 

 

If she thinks anything that passed between them the night before will have softened him in the morning, she is wrong. He’s more agitated than she’s seen him yet.

When the robot cat bounces off the wall in pieces, she startles hard, can’t suppress a noise of distress. And then she’s on the floor, gathering the pieces, feeling as broken as they are.

“ **Just leave it. It’s useless. I’ll throw it away later. And I’ll be leaving soon, so just forget about me.** ”

For the first time, what flares inside of her isn’t just hurt. It’s anger, hot and raw, and she makes no effort to subdue it, to counter it with sympathy.

“Okay, then. Fine. Great. Why even bother staying at all? You can just get the fuck out now.”

He turns slowly, his expression utterly condescending. “ **How are you going to stay safe on your own? Are you even thinking right now?** ” Something else flickers over his face like a drop of rain hitting a lake, but in an instant his scowl settles back in place. “ **Don’t think about me. Just think about protecting yourself!** ”

“ **I _can_ protect myself!**”

He snorts dismissively.

“Would you like me to prove it? I’d be pretty fucking happy to kick you in the nuts right about now.”

They go back and forth, voices rising until Seven is outright yelling at her. And then, suddenly, he isn’t yelling. He’s _pleading_ with her, desperate and devastated. “ **My house, my cars, the RFA, you, this place, everything… one day they will all disappear like the morning fog. A real life, real things I can have… don’t ever think and hope those things can exist.** ”

She realizes suddenly that he isn’t pleading with _her_ at all. He’s pleading with himself.

“ **Yoosung,** Lola **, all the members, even if you say that you like me.. my life… my life can’t embrace anything…** **You don’t know how it feels to live that kind of life. Don’t be nice to me when you don’t know anything. Please… get away from me. Just leave me alone.** ” When he raises his eyes, his gaze is hollow, empty, and his voice is flat. “ **The person you like is the 707 in the chatroom, not me.** ”

Arms wrapped around what’s left of the robot cat, she shuffles forward on her knees toward him in his corner that he has hardly stepped foot out of since he got here. Her heart is still beating hard, and there’s an intensity when she speaks, but it isn’t anger anymore, not really. “ **Then please let me understand the person in front of me…!** ”

“Lola... “ The desperate begging is back in his tone. “ **Why are you doing this to me…? I told you. Even if you say that… I can’t embrace anything… My life was wrong from the beginning. It’s a life that’s dangerous and filled with lies… I couldn’t even protect my one and only brother, and I have to abandon the person I like… My life is good for nothing. I don’t want to involve you in that kind of life… Why can’t you understand me…?** ”

She exhales slowly. “ **Why can’t _you_ understand? **...That day, the day I first came here and to the messenger. You all… I mean, there was some general WTF about the fact that I said I’d followed a random stranger’s directions to an apartment and just let myself in, but no one ever asked _why_ I even opened up an unknown app that had randomly appeared on my phone in the first place. It was because I’d gotten so drunk the night before, I figured it was something I’d downloaded on purpose--or, you know, semi-on purpose, as much as stupid drunk people have purpose anyway. I had drunk until I passed out because that day was the anniversary of my mom’s death, and I was hoping if I drank enough maybe I’d just sleep through the whole day. But then I woke up and I couldn’t sleep anymore and some weirdo told me to go to some weird place, and all I could think was, ‘Sure, why the fuck not? Anything is better than _this_.’ ...I was just _so fucking tired_ of pretending every single day that I’m fine, that I’m okay, that I’m normal. Because _I’m not_. _I’m not okay_. And I’m so scared of anyone realizing, _all the time_. But I really had myself fooled after I met you, didn’t I? I don’t even know exactly when it happened, but you must be right, and I must be really fucking stupid, huh? Because I honestly thought you kind of knew. I thought you kind of knew, and that you let me laugh and pretend anyway. You didn’t run away. You let me laugh. And maybe, just maybe, one day, when I was ready, you’d let me _not_ be okay around you, because _I_ was willing to let you to not be okay around _me_.”

There are tears in her eyes, but she clenches her jaw, steels herself, sniffles hard, and keeps going. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I thought you were going to _fix_ me or something. That’s the _point_. Nothing’s ever going to _fix_ me, I’m always going to have something not okay inside me. I just thought that maybe there was one person, finally, who I didn’t have to hide it from. One person who, if you got close enough to see, wouldn’t just turn away in disgust.” Her voice turns both soft and bitter. “...But it doesn’t matter. Because no matter what you’re going to leave me with exactly the only thing I’ve _ever_ really _deserved_ anyway.” She spits out word _deserved_ like the foulest curse. “ _Nothing_.”

The silence stretches as she stares at the wall behind him, and she thinks he isn’t going to say anything. It makes her angry all over again, that he would just leave it like this, that he has nothing else to give her but silence. It’s only when she turns to glare at him that she realizes he’s only been waiting for her to look, to give him her full attention, before he speaks quietly. 

“What is that you think is so wrong with you? What your mother did isn’t your fault. There’s nothing wrong with being sad sometimes because of it. There’s nothing wrong with being sad sometimes for no reason at all. What do you think is so awful about you?” It seems to be a genuine question, but he doesn’t give her a chance to answer it. “I know every single thing that’s wrong with me. I’m not a hopeless, miserable piece of shit for no reason. I know what I’ve done. I know where I came from. Lola, I’m _dangerous_ , and I’m a _liar_ , and when I leave here, you won’t be the _first_ person I’ve abandoned. You’re just…” He hesitates, looks a little guilty. “I’m not trying to trivialize things that have hurt you badly or the way you feel, but Lola, you’re just a girl who gets sad sometimes. That doesn’t make us the same.”

A thought seems to occur to him then, and he looks her straight in the eye, his expression horrified. “...Is that why it’s me? Becauseyou could have had your pick of the RFA, you have to know that. I mean, I’m pretty sure Jumin is somewhere on the ace spectrum, and I can tell that even he likes you. If you gave them half a chance, any one of them would fall in love with you. But you didn’t give them a chance. You kept paying more attention to me than anyone else, and I hated how much I liked that, because I was so sure it was just Seven Zero Seven whose attention you wanted, not _mine_ , not _really_.” He swallows with a look like he’s trying to contain outright panic. “If you said you liked me because you thought I was really like Seven Zero Seven, I could understand that. But you say saw through that. So is that why it’s me? Is that what it is, the thing that you like so much about me?” He looks like he has to brace himself to get the next words out. “Is it just that you think… I’m the only one fucked up enough for you? You think that you’re so fucked up that I’m the only one fucked up enough to _want_ you after I figured it out?”

It hurts him to ask. She can see it clearly, that the idea torments him. For all that he keeps throwing her liking him back in her face, she knows then that the fact of it doesn’t mean nothing to him. Because even though he keeps telling her she _shouldn’t_ , even he thinks she’s _too good_ , if her liking him is just based on him being the only one _bad enough_ for her, it will wreck him.

She hugs the bits of robot cat so tight that the edges dig into her skin, as appalled by his question as he obviously is by the thought. “It isn’t anything like that. It’s…” The easy answer would be to tell him that she just does. And there’s a certain truth to that, to the fact that, in the end, the heart wants what the heart wants. But he deserves something more than the easy answer. “...I feel safe with you. I don’t mean…” She gestures her head vaguely, indicating the apartment around them. “I mean, yeah, actually, this too; I _do_ feel safer about all this with you here, but _before_ this. Before I knew there was a hacker after me and a bomb. ...I’ve spent my whole life scared. Scared of anyone realizing there’s something wrong with me. Scared of being like my mother. Scared of being left the way my mother left me. But I don’t feel scared with you.”

She tilts her head, watches the relief on his face. “Not just that though. The more I got to know you the more I realized that… everyone else matters more to you than you do to yourself. They don’t even realize all the ways you take care of them, but you do. And not so that they’ll thank you for it. Just because. Because you’re a good person. The more I realized you were the least important person to yourself, that the one person you never bothered to take care of was yourself, the more… it made you the most important to _me_. It made me want to be the one who gets to take care of you.”

The way he’s looking at her… She’s sure no one has ever looked at her that way before. Like she is a miracle and a curse all at the same time. Like she’s stabbed him in the heart and then saved his life. Like she’s stolen from him the one thing most precious to him, but he would give her freely every single thing he has left anyway.

“ **...You’re impossible,** Lola. **You’re so strange. I feel like I’m going strange too. Why aren’t you giving up…?! What aren’t you getting hurt and abandoning me…?! What are you going to do if something happens to you because of me…?!** ”

She’s slow to answer. “Your brother… Saeran. You’re going to help him, aren’t you?”

She can see him trying and failing to follow the segue, can see his mild annoyance with his inability to do so, because he isn’t at all used to not being able to understand something when he puts his considerable mental capacities to it. Still, he answers with a raw honesty even if he can’t figure why she’s asking or what it has to do with the conversation at hand. “ **Yes.** If it’s the last thing I ever do, I don’t care, but I’m going to get him away from those people.”

“He’s a whole other kind of fucked up than _either_ one of us. He doesn’t justneed someone to get him out of there. He’s going to need help after that. ...A lot of help. And I still don’t understand what happened to either one of you, but I understand that it’s something to do with V, and that you think he betrayed you, and I understand enough to know you aren’t going to trust anyone else to be the one who helps him.”

“ **Yes.** ”

“...Then you have to get away from the agency anyway. To be able to protect him, to be the one who keeps him safe, you have to. I mean, I’m just some girl. He’s _your brother_. That’s a way bigger deal.” She takes a deep breath and tilts her chin up determinedly. “...So let me help you. I understand that it’s dangerous. I also understand--and I hope you can too--that if I choose to help you and something bad happens to me, then that wouldn’t ever be _your fault_. It would be the fault of the person who hurt me, not _you_. And I’m not afraid of this. I’ve spent a lot of my life scared of a lot of things, but this? Doing a good thing, doing something to help someone, even though I might get hurt? I’m not scared of that. So let me help you, Seven.” Her voice falls a notch, entreating. “Let me help you, Luciel.” There’s another name on the tip of her tongue, and she isn’t sure she has any right to speak it when it feels a little like something she took from him without his permission, when she isn’t sure he would _want_ to hear it _all_ , from anyone, much less from her, but the thing is, that name, it’s _his_ , and she wants him to know, to understand that the person she’s trying so hard to be allowed to care for isn’t anyone he only pretends to be. It’s _him_. Her voice is hardly more than a whisper. “Let me help you, Saeyoung...”

He takes a sharp breath, clearly caught entirely off guard and wrong footed.

Guilt hits her hard. It was, she thinks, the wrong impulse. It was a thing she shouldn’t have said. It wasn’t hers to choose to say. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. I shouldn’t have said it. **I’m sorry.** ”

Again with that look, like he doesn’t know if she’s ruined him or redeemed him.

“ **You… I… Can you just ...give me some time?** ”

“...As long as you need,” she says gently, gathering herself to try to rise with her hands still full.

“ **Wait**.” He tilts his head toward her arms. “ **Can I have that back?** ”

She hesitates, one brow rising suspiciously. “ **Are you going to throw Meowy away?** ”

He shakes his head, a look of faint amusement flitting over his features. “ **I promise I won’t.** ”

It isn’t a smile, but it’s the closest he’s come to smiling at her since he got here. _Oh_ , is all she can think.

 

 

After breakfast, she showers. She spends a long time under the spray of water, far longer than hygienically necessary. She’s a little afraid to get out. She’s afraid that she’ll discover that what’s actually washed away while she’s been in here is the break in Luciel’s coldness, that when she walks out into the living room she’s going to discover him ignoring her and shutting her out all over again.

The first thing she notices when she finally does leave the bathroom is that he isn’t in his corner. She can see it from the hallway, and he isn’t in it, and the thought that he _left_ without even saying goodbye shoots through her, even while she tries to reassure herself he wouldn't have just left half his stuff lying there like that.

She only realizes she’s holding her breath when she makes it to the end of the hall and discovers him sitting on the couch, an assortment of screw drivers, pliers, and tools she can’t identify spread out around him.

He glances up and then just keeps looking, no particular expression on his face. She isn’t sure what it is he’s looking at or waiting for, so she grins, embarrassed. “What?”

“ **I’m trying to decide if I should tell you that you should dry your hair or not. You _should_ , I don’t want you to catch a cold, but you already took too long, and…**” He looks away, and she realizes he’s blushing. “ **I want you to come sit with me.** ”

He’s _blushing_. The same boy who once told her she could pull his zipper down “a teeny tiny centimeter,” most certainly _not_ talking about the zipper-mouth emoji that _she_ had been referring to when she’d said wanted to unzip “it,” is blushing over admitting he wants her to sit on the couch with him. And that’s it, she thinks. She’s done, totally over, completely gone. Whether he wants it or not, her heart is his.

“ **I don’t need to dry my hair. It’s the middle of summer. It’s fine.** ” She takes a few slow, coy steps forward. “There’s no room for me though.”

Without hesitation, without even looking at what he’s knocking to the floor, he sweeps a hand over the cushion beside him, so that his tools go clattering, and pats. And then he does smile at her. It’s on the small side, but it’s an actual honest to goodness smile, somehow both bashful and cheeky all at the same time. _Stick a fucking fork in her_.

She sits sideways on the couch, feet up and arms around her legs, chin resting on her knees as she watches him work. He glances at her from time to time but he doesn’t say anything, not even when the look he gives her become a little scrunched and contemplative, so she finally gives in and just asks, “ **What are you thinking?** ”

“ **That you’re such a strange person. I’ve pushed you away multiple times saying that I can’t give you what you want, but you’re not discouraged at all and still at my side.** ” There’s something faintly incredulous on his face, but it fades as he adjusts his glasses. “ **Since we’re talking about it… you don’t say those things to other people, do you…? You might not know, but there are a lot of dangerous men in this world. If you’re too nice you might end up facing a lot of trouble.** ”

She tries to swallow the laugh that bubbles up, she really does, but it escapes from her throat anyway.

He eyes her indignantly. “ **What?!** ”

“ **I just… I’m really relieved? That you look like you’re giving up on convincing me that _you_ are a dangerous man who will only cause me trouble. Which is good, because I could tell you that I like trouble, but that would be a lie. I’m not totally against a little from time to time, but I don’t really _like_ trouble. I just like you.**”

His ears go pink again and he almost drops the bolt he’s screwing into place. “ **So, be-be careful saying things like that.** ” His brows draw together and his voice goes up a notch when he amends the statement. “ **No! Don’t say that ever… especially to other guys. Well, I mean.. never say never, but…! You should really be careful about saying things like that!** ”

She’s tempted to give him a hard time, to nod seriously and tell him that she understands that she is allowed to say things like that to other girls should she feel the need, just definitely not to other guys, but he looks flustered and a little fragile, so she just smiles. “ **I genuinely like you,** Seven. **I don’t say things like this to anyone else.** ”

She suspects the look on his face then is a lot like the one she gets when the RFA members tell her she’s doing a good job. A little _too_ casual to be anything other than disproportionately pleased. “ **Oh… Alright. As long as you don’t say it to everyone else.** ”

She isn’t sure if it’s because he’s trying to change the subject or he’s just realized that she wants to talk, not sit silently, but he clears his throat then, and asks, “ **Anyway, what else do you want to talk about?** ”

She isn’t sure he’ll be so willing to speak when she asks about his brother, but after going stiff for a moment, he does. He even brings his laptop over to the couch and shows her pictures after a he’s talked for a bit. They could just as easily be pictures of himself when he was younger.

“You’re identical twins? ...I couldn’t really tell before. When he was here. The hair and the contacts… I didn’t realize just how the same your faces really are.”

“ **He’s still smaller. He always was. I used to give him half my food, but he was always still small.** ”

He tells her about his and Saeran’s mother, and it takes her a long time to manage a response.

“My mother… I always thought what she did was so shitty and selfish. But… I understood _why_ she did it. I understood how she ended up that shitty and selfish, what made her like that. But _that_. I can’t understand _that_ at all. I don’t understand how a person could treat anyone like that, much less their own children. ...I don’t understand how you ended up so good despite growing up like that.”

He is so emphatically startled that he actually jolts as his eyebrows shoot upwards. “ **Me? I--what? No! I--** ”

“Stop it! You were really mean to me before, so now you _have_ to be nice and agreeable and not argue with me, especially when I’m making objectively, factually true statements about how good a person you are.”

He’s got that look again, like she’s offered him salvation with one hand and destroyed him with the other, and the only way she knows how to interpret it is that she’s pushed him as far as he can go right now, and he needs some time again before he can go any further. She’s leaning back into the couch, offering him just a little space, both physically and metaphorically, when he surges forward, lips pressing clumsily against hers. His hands are on her face right after, tilting her head and holding her still so he can press harder. His laptop hits the ground with an ominous crack, but he doesn’t spare it any attention. He’s pressing hard enough that when he parts his lips, hers open with them, and by the time his tongue slides against hers, the clumsiness is gone. Because she was already leaning back when he came crashing forward, he’s practically laying on top of her, her knee digging into his ribs, and if she could think at all, she might think it’s probably uncomfortable. But it’s little like the feeling of going down the first big drop on a roller coaster, only it’s not just her stomach she left dangling somewhere above her, she’s pretty sure her brain got left behind too, because the only thoughts she can manage to form are _yes,_ and _finally_ , and _more_. Her body catches up eventually, even if her brain can’t, and she’s just beginning to kiss him back when he pulls away. She makes a dissatisfied little grunt, lips chasing after his, and her hands come up to tug at his hoodie before she realizes he isn’t stopping, just moving back enough to push her knee aside so that it isn’t jabbing him, and once it’s out of his way, he’s back against her, kissing her stupid. It’s nothing like any kiss she’s ever had before. Her thoughts on kissing before this had been primarily comprised of the words _slobbery_ and _jabby_ , and it _had_ occurred to her that none of the ones she’d shared had been particularly exemplary instances of the deed, but she hadn’t so much thought they’d been especially _bad_ as she’d thought kissing just wasn’t as great as people made it out to be.

But the way he kisses… It isn’t just a wet muscle probing at her, it’s something he does with his whole mouth, teeth nipping and lips moving against hers while his tongue licks and slides. His hands are on her face again, his mouth still against hers, but she feels like her _whole body_ is lighting up like a pinball machine. She’s painfully aware of his body against hers, of exactly how he’d settled between her thighs when he moved her knee. She only realizes that he maybe _isn’t_ entirely, fully aware of it when, without any real conscious thought or intention, she rolls her hips and he exhales against her like he’s been punched in the gut, biting down unexpectedly hard on her bottom lip. His hips roll in response once before his whole body jerks away from her.

“ **Shit. Shit, shit. Sorry. I’m sorry.** ”

She blinks slowly, heavy lidded, wanting nothing more than for him to come back and keep kissing her. “What?” she asks dumbly.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to--are you… are you okay? With this?”

She blinks again, a kittenish smile spreading over her face. “You didn’t mean to kiss me?”

He’s blushing again, and she loves it.

“Ah. Yeah. No. I don’t know if I did at first. I didn’t really actually think about it. I was already doing it when I thought about it. But I guess it was on purpose after I thought about. To be fair though, my opinion at that point on whether it was a good idea or not may have been heavily influenced by the fact that it was really fucking good and I just really _wanted_ to do it more, rather than involving any actual discretion about the wisdom of doing it.”

The part of her that revelled in teaming up with Seven to tease the others in the chatroom is rising, and she can’t help herself now, her smile downright wicked. “So… were you apologizing for kissing me or for something else?”

Holding himself up off her like he is can’t be comfortable, and he moves finally, to the side, squishing himself between her and the back of the couch, using the movement to buy him time answering. “ **Uhhh…** I feel like no matter what I say it’s going to be the wrong answer to this.”

His wariness is clearly authentic--he doesn’t want to offend her--and it’s almost enough to hold off her teasing, but he looks amused, so she goes for it, exclaiming loudly, as though there is anyone else in the room to announce his embarrassment to, “You were apologizing for rubbing your dick against me, weren’t you?!”

He cringes hard, and the pink in his ears darkens and spreads to red on his cheeks, but she can see that he’s grinning before he ducks his head, pressing against her collarbone. “ **I changed my mind. You are a terrible person. I have no idea why I didn’t see it before.** ”

It’s a sensitive enough spot that, from anyone else, even clearly teasing as it is, it might have stung, but it’s _him_ , and even after all his attempts to push her away… with him she just feels _safe_. So she shrugs. “I _did_ warn you. You should know basic American policy is that you only have a thirty day window after receipt to return or exchange any defective items. After that, you’ll be stuck. So you better think about it well now.”

He raises his head and one eyebrow lifts over the rim of his glasses. “What did I receive?”

“Me, obviously.”

He laughs. God, she’s missed that sound, and it’s even better right in front of her than over the phone. “ **You?** ”

She nods firmly, and his face pulls into an expression she doesn't know how to name.

“ **You’re _mine_ now?**”

Another nod.

The smile he flashes at her then is absolutely brilliant. “ **You’re obviously a shameless troublemaker. Who knows what you’d get up to on your own. I guess I’ll have to keep you.** ” The smile slips as he rises one hand to trail his fingers against her cheek. His voice is low and quiet when he says, “ **Definitely shouldn’t be left alone. Never. What kind of bad jerk would try to do that? ...Stay with me?** ”

His words wrap around her so tightly that she can barely get out her response. “Okay.”

“ **I want to kiss you again.** ”

“Okay.”

“ **Can I?** ”

She giggles, and it releases enough of the pressure on her chest to get out more than one word. “I mean, I thought it was pretty implicitly implied in saying, ‘Okay,’ when you said you _wanted_ to, but yes, Seven Zero Seven, you are hereby authorized to kiss me. In fact, you have clearance to kiss me _any_ time you want to.”

He doesn’t move though, just keeps looking at her for a beat. “ **Say it again. What you said earlier.** ”

She tries to think but pulls a blank. “I said a lot of things earlier. I’m going to need more to go on than that.”

“ **...My name. My real name. I want to hear you say it again.** ”

“ **...Saeyoung.** ” Even to herself, her voice sounds… reverent.

She understands then that, much as it caught him off guard before, the impulse that made her say it wasn’t wrong at all. When his lips come down on hers, it’s like he’s trying to taste the word on her tongue. Without letting his lips leave her skin, he moves his mouth along her jaw to her ear and whispers, “ **Again.** ”

“ **...Saeyoung.** ”

He bites at the skin below her ear and then pushes his tongue against it hard. His breathing is heavy, uneven. “ **Again.** ”

But before she can get the word out, his fingers are over her lips, and he’s tilting his head to press his temple rather than his mouth against her neck. “ **Actually, no, don’t say it anymore yet. I can’t take it now. Just… just stay here with me for a little while?** ”

Maybe it’s a crazy thing to say to a boy who she only set eyes on for the first time less than a week ago and has only known at all for a little more than a month, but as she runs her fingers through his hair, it falls from her mouth without hesitation: “Always.”


End file.
